Aircraft Carriers

Lord West of Spithead: To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect that HMS “Queen Elizabeth” and HMS “Prince of Wales” will each proceed to sea under their own power for the first time.

Lord Astor of Hever: Final equipment installation and system commissioning plans are currently being developed for both ships. We expect HMS “Queen Elizabeth” to proceed to sea under her own power for the first time in early 2017 and HMS “Prince of Wales” in early 2019.

Armed Forces: Malaria

Baroness Corston: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what factors are taken into account when administering larium as a malaria prophylactic to British troops and reservists serving overseas.

Lord Astor of Hever: Mefloquine (commercially known as Lariam) is one of a number of effective methods of malaria chemoprophylaxis used by the military in many parts of the world where Service personnel deploy. The exact choice of drug depends on a number of factors, including the region the individual is deploying to, the health of the individual and any history of side effects. Mefloquine and other antimalarial drugs used by the military are licensed in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, based on the expert guidance of the Advisory Committee for Malaria Prevention of Public Health England. The Ministry of Defence reviews its policy on the use of antimalarial drugs in line with advice from the Advisory Committee.

Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Blencathra: To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to draw to the attention of England and Wales police forces National Health Service statistics about the number of new cases of female genital mutilation; and what recent discussions they have had with police and prosecution authorities about the prosecution rate for female genital mutilation.

Lord Bates: The Minister for Crime Prevention is chairing a cross government FGM roundtable meeting on 10 November, to which the National Policing Lead on Female Genital Mutilation, the Director of Public Prosecutions and other key stakeholders are invited. The meeting will take stock of progress in implementing the extensive package of announcements to tackle FGM made at the Girl Summit hosted by the PM on 22 July. This includes the recently published NHS statistics on cases of FGM and how they can be promoted, alongside new FGM prevalence data, part-funded by the Home Office and published by City University and Equality Now in July 2014.
	The roundtable will also review current progress on police and Crown Prosecution Service activity to tackle FGM.

Red Arrows

Lord West of Spithead: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what planning assumptions are in place for the Red Arrows when the current fleet of aircraft are due for replacement; and what aircraft type, if any, will replace them.

Lord Astor of Hever: I refer the noble Lord to the answer given by the Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology (Philip Dunne) in the House of Commons on 7 November 2013 (Official Report, column 307W). As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon) has recently said, the Red Arrows will continue flying.
	This Answer included the following attachment: Hansard Extract 7 November 2013 (Red Arrows.doc 7 November 2013 HL2401.doc)

RFA Argus

Lord Hylton: To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to expand the instructions given to RFA Argus so as to enable its medical facilities to assist all urgent cases from Sierra Leone or nearby states.

Lord Astor of Hever: RFA ARGUS is deployed to support the Government's efforts in Sierra Leone. Her primary role is to act as a logistics lift capability and aviation platform, with three embarked Merlin helicopters. RFA ARGUS does, however, have a limited medical capability on board to treat disease and non-battle injury. Treatment of those suffering from Ebola is carried out at separate facilities ashore, the first of which opened in Kerry Town on 5 November and will have the capacity to treat 80 local patients. Also at Kerry Town the UK military is currently manning a 12 bed treatment unit for national and international healthcare workers.

Social Security Benefits

Lord Beecham: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the steps they are taking to reduce the cost of benefit fraud, what they propose to do, and how much they plan to spend, to reduce underpayments to claimants due to mistakes by officials or claimants.

Lord Freud: The Department takes both under and overpayments seriously and has in place a number of initiatives to address the errors that cause them. These activities address fraud as well as error, and both under and overpayments. It is therefore not possible to separate out the cost of activities focused exclusively on underpayments as a result of error.
	Universal Credit will make the welfare system simpler by replacing six benefits and credits with a single monthly payment. This simplification is expected to lead to a reduction in fraud and error due to the fact that information about claimants will be held in one place and updated more frequently and easily.
	For claimants that have income taxed under PAYE, Universal Credit will be linked to HMRC’s Real Time Information system, which will provide an automatic monthly update of their income thus reducing the potential for both error and fraud.
	The Department has invested in compliance activity, so that case correctness is maintained and fraud and error entering the system are detected and resolved quickly. Across all delivery arms there is a focus on accuracy and quality, including a continuous quality checking regime to review claims and check processing accuracy.
	We constantly review claims by checking them against data coming into our systems, in order to highlight potential anomalies. We do this by using business rules which focus on potential error to identify both under and overpayments.
	The Department is taking steps to encourage claimants to ensure that the information provided to us is accurate and up-to-date. This includes a fraud and error
	communications campaign about driving behaviour change and emphasising that claimants must report any change of circumstances.

Syria

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to make representations to the European Commission to ensure that European Union policy and practice enable women and girls raped during the armed conflict in Syria to have access to safe abortions in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Baroness Northover: The UK is in regular dialogue with other EU bilateral donors and the European Commission to protect and promote women’s and girls’ access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services. This includes safe abortion services in line with our policy on safe and unsafe abortion. The UK remains one of only a handful of international donors willing to tackle this highly sensitive issue.

Type 26 Frigates

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to naming one of the new type 26 global combat ships after the City of Plymouth.

Lord Astor of Hever: I refer the noble Lord to the answer I gave on 30 October 2014 to the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead (Official Report, column WA184).
	This Answer included the following attachment: Hansard Extract 30th October 2014 (Type 26 Frigates.doc 30 October 2014.doc)